toxicitizen

I'm not on the Discord, no. I didn't even have a Discord account until very recently (and even then I was mostly just sitting in the channel waiting for the ResetEra migration). I was talking specifically about

Just got back from seeing The Last Jedi. I kind of expected to be able to point to at least one thing that explained why some people hated it so much but I can't. Reading about it now, it seems to be mostly due to the elements that were... let's go with subverted. There were a few things I wasn't so sure about when I walked out of the theater and the more I think about them the less I like them but overall it's at least as good as The Force Awakens. It felt a bit too long, though. That one subplot in the middle that was kinda boring and ultimately had no impact on the story whatsoever. How did that not get left on the cutting room floor?

They're still a relatively small studio, right? Between Ys and Trails alone, I'm having a hard time picturing them having another major series. Especially given how story-heavy Ys is apparently becoming. I'm really curious to finally see if Ys VIII truly rivals Trails in that regard. Then there's Tokyo Xanadu, which I really hope wasn't a one-off. I'm not done with it yet but I'm really enjoying having a Falcom game set in the "real" world, so I hope they're planning a sequel or something.

Darksiders III seems to be coming along very nicely. I remember thinking the initial gameplay reveal felt a bit off and stiff but I'm really not getting the same vibe from this. I was hoping it was just due to it being early in development and it seems that was exactly the case.

Hey, I'm all for random tangents that cause other people to join in. Is there any censorship drama surrounding Tokyo Xanadu, though? I'm not aware of any and there hasn't been anything in the game itself that stood out to me. The thing about censorship is that I agree with the sentiment of being against it as a general rule but I'm a bit more selective about what I personally get upset about. Mainly because of how it often seems to revolve around "they edited this outfit and now we can't see the panties of the 8 year old loli anymore!" That is just not a hill I'm going to die on. My stance on that kind of censorship is very much "and nothing of value was lost".

Not a Hero is the free one, End of Zoe is like 15 bucks on its own. And from what I've heard, the free one is the better of the two lol.

I honestly think most of them lack the self-awareness to even realize that they're awful people but that's fairly typical of shitty people in general. What really boggles my mind is this notion that there's a group of people hellbent on ruining something as inconsequential as video games by making them more inclusive (?????) and how that's somehow something worth worrying about. I've yet to see anyone unironically complain about SJWs and follow that up by raising anything remotely close to a valid concern. I mean, as far as conspiracy theories go, this one is just kinda sad and pathetic. I get that online anonymity can cause people to let out their crazier side but if someone I was talking to IRL started ranting about that shit I'd just start backing away slowly and would genuinely question their mental well-being.

You're joking but I actually saw a thread on the Okami Steam Hub that really made my head hurt the other day. It might've been trolling (I honestly doubt it...) but someone was asking about the game's subtitles and whether "SJWs got their hands on them". I guess they were worried that the game's subs had been edited by the Evil SJW Illuminati... or something? Why they thought someone would feel the need to change the script and story of Okami, of all fucking things, for seemingly no reason is honestly beyond me. Sometimes I seriously wonder what world these fucking idiots think they live in... Also, you did buy Zwei while I still haven't, so I'll let your transgression slide this time!

So, after ~25h of playtime, I reached what feels like it was probably the halfway point of Tokyo Xanadu. Which means I'm ready to give some more detailed thoughts about it. This is a Falcom game for sure, it's pretty damn good and it's up there with Trails and Ys as far as I'm concerned. It doesn't top those series' respective peaks but it's definitely better than their lows. I don't know if I got used to it or if it just wasn't as bad as I initially thought but the combat actually works pretty well once you get used to it. It felt stiff like Cold Steel at first but by this point I've gotten used to running around, timing my attacks and dodging just fine. It's not as fast and tight as Ys but it's way less awkward than pulling off those advantage backstabs in Cold Steel. Besides, apparently Ys is the wrong Falcom series to compare this to. I couldn't know at first because I haven't played it but apparently this is pretty much Falcom doing a modern take on the Zwei formula, which actually makes me way more interested in Zwei. I mean, I already was but now I'm actually a little hyped to play them. The story has been mostly episodic for the first half of the game (as if to emphasize it even more, the game actually replays the anime OP at the beginning of every single chapter). I feel like that's probably going to change after the point where I stopped yesterday, though. The game was setting up a clear direction/end game for future chapters and, as with Trails, things are slowly starting to pick up halfway through. I'm really looking forward to seeing if it's going to get as crazy as Trails can get. Few games have managed to top the final 30mins of Cold Steel 1 as far as "Holy fucking shit, HYPE!!!" goes. As for the localization, so far it's been pretty solid imho. Outside of the obvious handful of garbage ("fukkleducks" or whatever the hell it was), there's the occasional line that feels a bit weird but it's often because it feels so much like Trails that sometimes the more "modern" language can feel out of place somewhat. Seriously, this feels so much like Cold Steel on the surface that it's easy to forget it's not actually a Trails game. At times it honestly almost feels like a What-If Trails spin-off. Hell, there's at least one music track that I think might actually be straight up lifted from the Cold Steel OST and some of them would feel right at home in Trails. And, unsurprisingly given how it borrows from it even more heavily than Cold Steel, there's even some that sound really Persona-like to me. So yeah, TL;DR: Tokyo Xanadu is fucking great and you're a bad Falcom fan if you don't buy it!

I'm not particularly interested in Wildlands, it's just not my kind of game. But I'm really digging how this kind of licensed DLC is becoming increasingly common. Stuff like having DLC characters that allow for an Alien vs Predator (or Freddy vs Jason, if they weren't available in different games) match in Mortal Kombat is just pure dumb fun. But I was looking at Dead by Daylight DLC yesterday and I had heard about the recent Freddy Kruger pack but turns out there's also a Michael Myers one and a Leatherface one, which is just fucking awesome to have for that game. It kinda makes me wish there wasn't a similar Friday the 13th game, just so Jason could be in there with the others.

No mouse movement, no. I don't think that would work all that well for a non-isometric game, though. It's either controller or mouse and keyboard (with the mouse only controlling the camera). I wouldn't say it's as fast-paced as Ys. At least so far, most enemies are fairly slow and relatively easy to dodge, so it seems like they at least took the stiffness into account. The store page says the 10% discount ends on December 15. So you've got another week or so.

Well, I only put about 3 hours into it so far but I've cleared the first chapter so I think I have a decent idea of what the game will be like. Basically, it's Cold Steel but without the Trails and with a little bit more Persona. It clearly runs on the same engine because all the "building blocks" (text boxes, sound effects, character models, etc...) are identical or very similar. Ultimately the story will be the main factor for me but I really like it so far. The combat feels kinda weird, though. It's basically Ys-like action-RPG combat but with the stiff movement from Cold Steel. It works fine but it's not exactly tight. If movement bothered you in Cold Steel, @Mal, I think you're not gonna be crazy about it. I wonder if they were limited by their engine choice (or perhaps code reuse) or if it was somehow intentional. Does Ys VIII run on the same engine? Because if it does then I'm kinda baffled. You would think Falcom of all developers would know how to make tight, responsive action-RPG combat.

I told myself I'd wait and then I just bought it the second it went live anyway. Oh well, at least I didn't get screwed over by the currency bullshit. It's like 62 bucks after the launch discount, which is pretty reasonable. It'll be almost 4AM by the time it's done downloading, though, so now the question is do I stay up or not...

Tokyo Xanadu is live on Steam with a 10% launch discount! Never heard of a 3AM unlock time but I'm not complaining. Kinda wish it had been closer to midnight, though, because then I would've had a few hours to play.

You technically know more, you just have a billion more questions. Questions like "what in the fucking name of hell?" and "how many drugs is Kojima on?". I really hope that FROM thing isn't another Sony exclusive. Ideally a multiplatform Souls-like in a completely new setting.

Last I heard, CS2 is due early 2018 (I wanna say January but I honestly can't remember if I saw Durante hinting at it or if it's just wishful thinking on my part) so I'm hoping to see the store page go up this month. Then again, I've been burned before by being too optimistic about XSEED's release windows... In other news, the awful store banner for Tokyo Xanadu eX+ has been changed to a much better looking one. Also, I guess it's coming in 2 days! I probably shouldn't buy it, especially with Okami and the RE7 DLC next week, but I probably will -_-. Unless they go "Fuck Canada" and charge like 80 bucks for it, I guess. That would make it easier to hold off.

After spending the last few days back in Atelier Sophie, I was in the mood for more anime JRPG bullshit. Since Gust's other games are still a bit too pricy, I grabbed this one. Only played an hour or so and so far my main takeaway is that 2 hours is way too short for the refund window. I loved everything about it except the gameplay, which wasn't as good as I expected. I feel like it could grow on me, though. And like I said, I love pretty much everything else about it. So the story, music, characters, etc, could likely carry the game. I feel like I'd need something like ~5 hours or so with it to really know for sure. :/

Meh, I want to get a Switch eventually but I don't think I'd ever play anything other than exclusives on it. VC4 will probably come to PC at some point, I'd rather hold off for a port than buy a console just to play it early. Anyway, just wrapped up one more game. They finally patched the 2D assets to be full resolution, so I used that as an excuse to jump back in and finish the post-game stuff. Now if only they'd do better discounts during sales. I'd like to get Atelier Firis before the new one comes out but it was still like 50 bucks in the last Steam sale, which seems a little steep to me.

XSEED had a mystery stream planned for tonight (still going, I think) and the big announcement is that they're also releasing Zwei 1. Apparently they had been working on both games concurrently and the second one was simply ready to release first. Kind of unexpected, I figured the first one might be too much of a headache for tech reasons. Especially since they dropped the 2 from the sequel's english title. But hey, at least now I'll get to play them in order. Also, for once they put the Steam store page up right away.

The pre-order discount on GamersGate seemed about as good as it was going to get so I went for it. Oh and this was like 5 bucks on chrono.gg a few days ago. I expect now that I finally pulled the trigger it'll be bundled any day now...

Well, they might not have announced Valkyria Chronicles 4 for PC but at least the announcement got me to finally go back to the original and finish it off. Hopefully this isn't the last time I play a Valkyria game on PC.

I know it's just the first trailer but after that leaked Comic Con footage I was kind of hoping to see Thanos do something a little scarier than just punching Iron Man. Although, to be fair, that looked like a hell of a punch. Looks pretty good otherwise, though. Anyway, can't believe we're already almost there. It felt so far off at the time but the original Avengers doesn't feel like it was THAT long ago. Also, I don't think I ever did the ranking thing so here goes. God tier: The Avengers Captain America: The Winter Soldier Guardians of the Galaxy Doctor Strange Thor: Ragnarok Great tier: Iron Man 3 Ant-Man Captain America: Civil War Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 Spider-Man: Homecoming Good-to-okay tier Iron Man The Incredible Hulk Thor Captain America: The First Avenger Avengers: Age of Ultron Shit tier: Iron Man 2 Thor: The Dark World Most of these I've only ever seen once, though, so this is subject to change if I ever decide to do a full MCU rewatch. Not the shit tier, though. I'm never rewatching those pieces of garbage. I'm noticing that, personally, I find the quality is actually improving over time. I wasn't that crazy about any of the Phase 1 movies back in the day but the hype leading up to The Avengers was more than enough to carry them. But now I find myself enjoying random stuff like Ant-Man and Doctor Strange way more than I ever did anything before the first Avengers. It has me pretty hyped about Black Panther, even though it should be completely overshadowed by the insanity that is Infinity War.

With the Deadpool game having recently been delisted once again, I figured I probably should grab MvC3 while I still can. You never know with these fucking licensed games and there's something about Marvel specifically that seems to make them prone to sudden disappearance. The RE7 season pass finally hit something closer to a sane price over on GamersGate and with the last of the DLC coming in a few weeks I figured I might as well. Also grabbed some dirt cheap DLC not worth posting pics for, including the Mankind Divided season pass because I hate myself.

This is amazing and I want it to be a real game so fucking bad.